Sometimes success in this life comes after fighting against all odds over a prolonged period. From a shy, fat kid with a fixed mindset to a man with a six pack, a six-figure income, and multiple successfully sold businesses in less than half a decade, Shashank Agarwal’s story is worth reading.
Hailing from a middle-class family in India, Agarwal was always fascinated by technology. After completing an engineering degree in India, he headed to the US to pursue a master’s degree. During that time, he tinkered with the idea of entrepreneurship, but he struggled to find success.
According to Agarwal, “During my master’s, entrepreneurship fascinated me, and although most of my ideas failed, one got a lot of traction. We ended up winning a prestigious startup competition in Israel, but, as fate would have it, our development team left for jobs at big tech giants, and we had to close the business.”
After finishing his master’s, Shashank started working in the corporate world, but the desire to help humanity never left him. While working in the corporate for a couple of years, he realised that most people end up chasing money at the cost of their mental well-being, health, and relationships. Very competitive by nature, Shashank also noticed that although there are many rich men in the world, full stack men—as he likes to call them—are a rare find.
He says, “I borrowed this term from the software industry. A full stack man is someone who has attained a high level of competence in multiple areas of life, including money, social skills, mental and emotional well-being, and personal health, all of which are equally important. After this deep realisation, I started my journey of self-improvement.”
To improve his health, Agarwal started going to the gym 6 days a week and doing CrossFit regularly. He even participated in a couple of half-marathons. Reading books on stoicism helped him to develop a growth mindset and support his mental well-being. Additionally, he developed skills in a wide range of other areas, including software engineering, dancing, photography, investing, and more. He has documented his journey on the Instagram account @expandingourselves.
As someone whose main mission in life is global problem-solving, he adds, “My two main missions involve fitness and relationships. Firstly, I want to solve the global health crisis, as I strongly believe that all other materialistic possessions are useless without optimal health. Secondly, I strongly believe that men and women are better together than far apart. The distance between genders is causing too much sorrow for both men and women.” He has documented his thoughts and more on his website https://expandingourselves.com/.
Talking a bit more with us, he explained how he was able to create and sell two software businesses in the last year. His process involves developing a fully automated niche tech business and working toward a high profit margin—not necessarily high revenues—by keeping the costs negligible.
He explains, “I created two businesses. One was an AI-powered chatbot catered toward the non-profit industry, and the other was an AutoML tool to streamline predictive analytics end-to-end for a non-technical audience.” He adds, “Both businesses were developed end-to-end by me with minimal upfront investment, and since they were fully automated tech businesses, I literally had no recurring monthly costs.”
He also adds, “The Shashank you are talking with today thinks completely differently than the one you would have encountered two years ago. Now I am a strong believer in making very small changes every day, as you would be surprised where you could end up in just a couple of years.”
We hope you’ve enjoyed reading Shashank Agarwal’s story.
